Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to the field of wireless communications, including spatial reuse in wireless communications.
Background
A wireless communication protocol may support spatial reuse. For example, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11ax standard (current proposals and/or future versions) supports spatial reuse. A station may implement spatial reuse by determining whether a received frame is from its own basic service set (BSS) or an overlapping basic service set (OBSS). Specifically, the station may transmit according to different spatial reuse rules (e.g., a clear channel assessment (CCA) threshold) depending on whether the received frame is from the station's own BSS or from an OBSS. For example, the station may transmit more aggressively (e.g., use a higher CCA threshold value) for an inter-BSS frame, and transmit more conservatively (e.g., use a lower CCA threshold value) for an intra-BSS frame.
In addition, the station may use Request to Send and/or Clear to Send (RTS and/or CTS) frames to reserve the wireless medium and protect upcoming transmissions from interference from neighboring stations. For example, the station may transmit a RTS frame on the primary link to reserve the wireless medium and prevent the neighboring stations from transmitting on the primary link. But protecting upcoming transmissions using RTS and/or CTS frames, and effectively enabling a spatial reuse opportunity at a neighboring station, are conflicting goals.